Am J Psychiatry 1994; 151:120-122
Copyright © 1994 by American Psychiatric Association
Maintenance of training effects on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test by patients with schizophrenia or affective disorders
JT Metz, MD Johnson, NH Pliskin and DJ Luchins
Department of Psychiatry, Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago, IL.
The authors used the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test to study 50 hospitalized
psychiatric patients: 28 with schizophrenia, 17 with affective disorders,
and five with schizoaffective disorder. The schizophrenic patients
performed significantly more poorly than the patients with affective
disorders. Both groups of patients improved when given additional
instructions. The schizophrenic patients maintained their improvement when
retested approximately 6 weeks later. The results suggest that factors
other than frontal cortex dysfunction are involved in schizophrenic
patients' performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test.
